Final judgment, p.7
Final Judgment, page 7
“Eli ‘Aaron’ Berwald, I presume,” the man said.
“Who and what are you?” Aaron demanded.
“Cooper,” he replied. “Matthew Cooper, Justice Department. You and your people are illegally holding a federal agent. You are also interfering in an officially government-sanctioned counterterror operation.”
Aaron paused for a moment, digesting that. “You say you are with the Justice Department?”
“Yes.”
“That’s unusual. I wasn’t aware our Justice Department went around fielding black-clad commandos bearing enough armament for a one-man war.”
“I could say the same of our Jewish lobbying organizations.” Cooper nodded toward his captors and back to Aaron.
“You are here to argue politics?”
“No,” he said. “I’m here to stop Klaus Nitzche and free the hostages he’s holding.”
“We are here to do the same. If you wish to assist us, we won’t stop you. Don’t get in our way.”
“That’s not how this works,” Cooper said. Aaron could see a muscle connected to the man’s jaw working. “I’ve wasted enough time with you idiots. Put down your guns and go home. Now. While you still can.”
Aaron sighed. “Malachi, tie him up. We’ll leave him here, out of the way, and try to come back for him when we extract.”
Malachi moved forward and nudged the government agent with the barrel of his Glock pistol. “All right, you—” he said.
The moment the weapon touched Cooper, he spun, slapping the gun away, stepping in and using the lower edge of his hand to scoop up and into Malachi’s throat. The man dropped, choking. The other three members of the rear guard, except for Jeff, tried to rush the government man, who became a blur of motion. He kicked one savagely in the stomach, turned, swept his arm up under Hiram’s armpit and did some kind of twisting, tossing move that threw the man to the ground. He ended up against the far side of the trench wall next to Jeff and rammed an elbow into his face. The blow seemed almost an afterthought, as if Bolan were making a point.
When the former captive ripped the big knife from its sheath and was suddenly holding the blade at his throat, Aaron realized that making a point was exactly what this Matthew Cooper had in mind.
“Don’t kill me,” Aaron said. “We aren’t your enemies.”
“You’re nobody’s enemy, Berwald,” Cooper said. “You’re a child compared to the people you think you’re hunting. They’re going to grind you up and throw you away if you set foot in that place. You have absolutely no idea what you face here, none! You’re going to die, Berwald, and every last one of the people with you is going to as well.”
“Stand and do nothing in the face of evil, then?” Aaron said with difficulty, feeling sweat trickle down his forehead as the edge of the knife brushed his neck. He saw the rest of his half-dozen commandos start to move in, start to reach for their weapons. He very slowly held up one hand and waved them off.
“No,” he said. “Don’t try anything. Offer no resistance.”
“I’m trying to be tolerant, Berwald,” Cooper said. “You’re not in my league. Your people are amateurs. Get gone, now, or the blood spilled when they’re all taken out will be on your hands.”
“My people are trained,” Aaron said. “What they lack in experience they make up for in preparation.”
“If your people were trained,” Cooper retorted, “they’d have shot me the moment they set eyes on me, instead of dancing around trying to see who I was. Do you honestly think some kickboxing classes and a handful of small arms put you even with Nitzche and his thugs?”
“They’re human,” Aaron said. “They bleed like we all do.”
Cooper withdrew the knife. “I’m continuing on,” he said. “If I see you or any of your group following me, I will put you down.”
He brushed past the ranks of Aaron’s shaken men and disappeared into the trench beyond. Once cloaked by the shadows, it was as if he had never been there.
“Aaron?” Malachi asked, wheezing, from the ground. Hiram, shaking but not hurt, helped him to his feet. “What do we do?”
Aaron looked after Cooper, his face growing hot.
“We do what we came here to do,” he said, drawing his pistol.
Chapter 7
They weren’t going to listen. Bolan knew the type too well. They were stubborn and, until somebody bloodied their noses for them, they were going to insist that they knew what they were doing.
He had done all he could to discourage them. The rest was on them.
The soldier hurried through the trench until, finally, the mouth of another tunnel awaited. He would have to go underground if he were to continue. Inside, there were no lights, although there were more disconnected or unpowered task lights strung up. He used his combat light and pressed on, keeping the M-4 ready at his side on its sling.
The Executioner checked his phone every few junctions, driving deeper. The tunnel opened to a trench again before once more diving underground. The maze of passageways was very similar to one he had fought through before. That facility, too, had been a den for neo-Nazis, its most notable and dangerous feature being―
Bolan stepped on some kind of mechanical release.
Traps. The most notable feature of the maze he had walked previously had been booby traps. Had he just stepped on a land mine?
He used his light to probe the darkness at his feet. His combat boot rested on a metal trigger. He bent and very carefully scratched away some of the dirt around the sole.
It didn’t look like any land mine he had seen previously. It did, however, look like an alarm trigger. To be safe, Bolan lowered his center of gravity, loading his leg muscles to spring. Then he counted off in his head.
He jumped, crashing into the far wall of the trench. Nothing exploded.
But the soldier could hear footfalls coming quickly, from before him, not behind. It had definitely been an alarm, and Nitzche’s men were about to make themselves known.
So be it. He would be ready.
He was already on the floor of the trench, so he stayed there. He stretched out prone and extended the M-4 before him, sighting through the red-dot optics. The enemy were significant in number and lax in discipline. He heard them coming from some distance, muttering to one another and making what was, to Bolan, a racket as they stomped along.
He lay very still.
In the shadows, pressed against the base of the trench wall, Bolan became just another part of the semidarkness. As the oncoming force neared he could pick out detail. They carried Kalashnikov rifles and wore the same camouflage fatigues that Nitzche’s terrorists at the courthouse had worn. They were moving from the direction of Nitzche’s bunker.
The HN was on parade.
Bolan’s finger tightened on the trigger of the carbine. Quietly, he shifted position, training his optics on the first man in line. They would close in, and then they would spot him. As they tried to acquire him with their rifles, he would send them to hell.
Except they didn’t. They kept right on coming, making no change in their demeanor even when they were practically on top of the soldier. They were chattering together, trading insults, laughing. They weren’t worried at all. They were safe in their fortress; what could touch them here that they couldn’t repel?
Then they hurried right past him.
One man came close enough that he nearly stepped on Bolan’s rifle. The Executioner let the knot of soldiers pass, and when they had walked beyond his position, he rolled onto his back and then to his knees, regaining his feet. The beams of the flashlights the men carried gave away their locations and backlit them beautifully.
The Executioner squeezed the trigger again and again, spraying out the magazine of the carbine in short, tight bursts. He ripped the enemy open from behind, pumping bullets into their spines and the backs of their heads. The M-4 cycled empty and Bolan let it fall on its sling, drawing the Desert Eagle from its Kydex holster and pumping .44 Magnum rounds into the remaining foes. He shot one in the face, another through the neck; drilled still another through the heart.
Answering fire came from the opposite end of the trench, where it opened into the tunnel he had recently traversed. Bolan pressed himself against the wall and listened as slugs dug dirt from the trench opposite his position. They came from handguns, a mixture of types and calibers. It was most likely the Lantern team. If they were targeting him, either to eliminate him or because they had mistaken his shooting for that of the neo-Nazis, they weren’t doing a very effective job. He waited for the gunfire to abate and then hurried into the next tunnel.
The lights came on. Just like that, the tunnel and the trenches beyond it danced with shadows cast by the multiple hanging work lights. Bolan reloaded his M-4 as he crouch-walked ahead. There was still a long way to go.
As he suspected would happen, more clots of neo-Nazi troops began to move through the trench maze, which branched often into switchbacks and dead ends. The closer he got to the bunker, the more complex the configuration would become.
It was time Nitzche’s goons got a taste of psychological warfare. Bolan reached into his war bag and produced a small radio. It was a simple AM-FM world band receiver, tuned to a local rock station. Bolan picked up his pace, found the set of cross-trenches he wanted and switched on the radio, throwing it far from him. At the end of the trench, electric guitar and driving drums began extolling the virtues or faults of someone named “Black Betty.” Bolan affixed the suppressor to his Beretta 93-R and snapped the selector switch to semiautomatic.
He let the first few neo-Nazis pass his position. These men thought they were stealthy; they were crouch-walking with their Kalashnikovs held at low ready, prepared to engage as soon as they found a target. Stupidly, they were homing straight in on the music, rather than recognizing it as the decoy it clearly was.
One of them, Bolan realized, wasn’t quite as stupid as the others. As if he could smell the trap, he turned his head, checking over his shoulder. The last thing he saw wasn’t Bolan stepping from the shadows, extending the Beretta 93-R. No, the last thing he saw was the suppressor itself, as Bolan pushed the snout of the weapon in front of the neo-Nazi’s left eye and pulled the trigger.
The clap of the suppressed Beretta would have been enough to alert the other shooters, but the warm, wet splash of their partner’s brains in their ears tipped the gunmen first. Bolan gave them credit; they didn’t waste time with exclamations of shock or shouted threats. They just turned to fire.
He shot each man once. At such close range, it was like a carnival game rigged in his favor.
“Oh my God!” Bolan shouted, pitching his voice slightly higher than normal. “They’re dead! They’re all dead!”
He moved into the next tunnel, drew his combat knife with his left hand and brought the massive blade down through the hanging cable of lights. The bulbs sparked, the rubber handle of Bolan’s weapon insulating him from the surge. The tunnel was plunged into darkness.
“What happened?” someone asked.
“I can’t see anything!” said another.
“Use your flashlights, morons!” a third man said.
The neo-Nazis switched on their lights—and Bolan was waiting. Flicking the Beretta’s selector to 3-round burst, he fired a blast into the chest of each man foolish enough to leave his flashlight on. The hollowpoint rounds chewed through his enemies and left them dead in bloody heaps on the trench floor.
“It’s so horrible!” Bolan shouted again. He ran, shooting, targeting more distant flashes of light, not caring if he scored clean hits or not. His goal was to create confusion, fear and chaos. It was part of the tradecraft of the guerrilla fighter.
Bolan was very good at what he did.
The neo-Nazis began shouting to one another. The suppressor disguised the muzzle-blast and diffused the sound of Bolan’s shots. The enemy wouldn’t be able to place him based on his fire.
“Who was that?”
“Morales?”
“Eaton, is that you?”
“They got Eaton! He’s dead! He’s dead! I never saw who did it!” Bolan shouted.
“Who said that? Eaton! Eaton!”
Bolan screamed as he ran past, doing his best bloodcurdling, wordless yell. He shot another of the men and then, sheathing his knife and pistol, withdrew three canisters from his war bag. He pulled the pins as he sprinted for the end of the tunnel, tossing the canisters behind him. Drawing a large light-stick from his bag, he snapped it and tossed it after the canisters. Then he crouched, faced the wall of the trench and opened his mouth while covering his ears.
The flash-bang grenades rolled through the tunnel, bouncing off dead men and dirt walls. The light-stick followed, leaving glowing green phantom trails in the air.
The flash-bangs detonated.
Bolan saw a burst of light through his eyelids, but his vision wasn’t destroyed as were the senses of his enemies. In the glow of the light-stick he targeted the men where they stood, knelt or writhed. The man once known as Sergeant Mercy showed these miserable soldiers of hate what true mercy was as his bullets dug tunnels through their brains, through their hearts or spines. The weapon was part of him. He fired it as naturally and as effortlessly as breathing, seemingly without conscious thought.
He was the Executioner.
Bolan had more tricks in his bag. He backtracked to the little GP4 radio he had thrown, found it and switched it off, pocketing it once more. It was small and light, no bigger than the palm of his hand; he carried more than one receiver like it. From his war bag he produced two spheres the size of metal “meditation balls.” These were made of impact-resistant clear plastic, housing clusters of bright blue-white LEDs. They were pocket strobes.
He heard movement at his back. It was tentative, confused; the Lantern people had caught up. He activated the pressure switch on one of the strobes and dropped it in his path. Farther along, he tossed another down a side trench. Then he began his psy-ops campaign anew, running from trench to trench, always working his way closer to Nitzche’s bunker. At each crossway he shouted or whispered some new horror to the men in the darkness―those foolish enough to believe they hunted Bolan, rather than the other way around.
The neo-Nazis changed their tactics at the next tunnel. He cut their lights again, but not before he saw four men at the mouth link arms. They ran at him in a phalanx, determined to crash into him in the darkness. A dumb play, though against amateurs like the Lantern operatives, it would probably work. It was just too bad for the HN thugs that Bolan had found them first.
Time to create unreasoning terror in the opposition. They had to believe the trenches were the dominion of some unspeakable wraith, some unstoppable, unseen killing machine. Bolan took no pleasure in it, but for one man to defeat many, it was necessary. He stowed the Beretta.
Bolan dropped to one knee, braced the M-4 and chopped the legs out from under the phalanx. He rolled to the side to avoid the panic fire that followed. The soldier was no longer where his muzzle-blast had been. Bullets punched useless holes in the dirt.
In the darkness, as the strobe lights flashed, the black-clad soldier moved like a stop-motion monster crawling from a horror movie. There were screams from the wounded neo-Nazis and those nearby witnessing the attack as Bolan fell upon them.
The Executioner waded into them with a blade. They weren’t unarmed; they had pistols and one had a rifle slung over his shoulder. One of the unlucky four even tried to draw his own blade in response to the threat, perhaps believing that stabbing randomly in the strobing fever-dream of the tunnel, he could succeed where aimed fire had so far failed. Bolan’s blade went in and out, in and out, across and down. Blood sprayed. The screams of the dying were joined by screams of fear from the other men in the tunnels and trenches.
“He’s insane!” Bolan shouted through the darkness. “Run! Run! Nothing can stop him!”
“Go, go, go!” someone screamed from among the neo-Nazis forces.
“Call for backup! Call for backup!”
The rest of the screams weren’t screams at all, but blind gunfire as the HN cowards emptied their weapons into the darkness. Bolan stayed low, crawling on his belly, his knife in his fist as he wormed his way along. The strobes, which had limited power sources, had stopped now. The only illumination was from the flashlight beams of the shooters. A second cluster of lights was moving up the trench from far behind. That would be the Lantern people, who had bunched up so badly they were sitting ducks should anyone decide to trigger a blast into their midst.
The soldier crawled forward. A new group of neo-Nazis was filing down the trench, trying to cover each other’s flanks with their guns. Bolan moved straight up the middle, his blacksuit camouflaging him effectively. The men were night-blind, relying on the flashlights they carried. They were sweeping the beams ahead at chest level, not watching the ground.
